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Old Trapper's Lodge Statues

They stand, silent and spooky: Goggle-eyed sculptures of California pioneers and unhappy Native Americans, in a rarely-visited corner of a college campus just down the street from the Encino Mall. Who made them? And what are they doing here?

The statues were built by an aged visionary named John Ehn. Proud of his pioneer ancestry, he called himself "The Old Trapper" and spent the last thirty years of his life crafting his masterworks, using his family and himself as models, a classic victim of dementia concretia. He displayed the finished sculptures at his motel near Burbank Airport, which he named The Old Trapper's Lodge.

Ehn was 84 when he died in 1981. His creations were declared a California state cultural landmark four years later. Culture, however, rarely stops progress in Southern California. Bulldozers arrived to level The Old Trappers Lodge in the late 1980s. The statues were imperiled. And here's where the story gets murky.

The Trapper's Family stands bravely.

An unknown fan of The Old Trapper made a phone call to nearby Pierce College. Somehow, he or she persuaded a decision-maker at the school to "adopt" the statues. Before anyone else knew what had happened, the Trapper's Lodge statues had a new home in Cleveland Park -- an out-of-the-way patch of land behind the Animal Sciences Building. What was said to seal the deal, and what was the fallout for the decision-maker, no one will say.

An even greater mystery surrounds the continued upkeep of the Old Trapper's creations. According to a Pierce official, "Every few years we get a letter saying that someone's coming down to repaint the statues." The folks at Pierce never ask who. "Last time the statues got painted, the trail around the Park needed work as well." The college couldn't afford it -- so the mysterious caretakers did it themselves. "Did a good job, too."

The brightly-colored figures are arranged near a large barbeque grill. A Mormon does battle with one Indian, while another carries away a scantily clad woman in a scene titled "Kidnap." Bizarre faces poke up from the ground. A Miner and two Gold Rush gals relax on a rough wooden bench.

John Ehn would be pleased that his statues have been kept so well, though he'd be frustrated that few people appreciate their maintenance. The statues are mostly ignored. Perhaps the young people instinctively sense a Dark Force that surrounds these scary totems, and give them a wide berth.